Atopos cvc presents Not A Toy – the first book on the growing influence of Character design in fashion and art. Characters are reduced and abstract figures with a strong anthropomorphic appeal and bold graphical silhouette. Over the last decade, they have playfully sampled and remixed their way through visual codes and media, confronting the viewer head-on, regardless of cultural background. Now, this aesthetic strategy has a strong influence on contemporary fashion design. International artists create playful dresses, avant-garde costumes and hairstyles, re-inventing the human body and sending their radical, new Characters onto the catwalk and beyond.

This extensive, colourful compilation features original essays by leading scholars in the field:
› Vassilis Zidianakis, Artistic Director of Atopos cvc: Preface
› Ginger Gregg Duggan & Judith Hoos Fox, founders of the international curatorial partnership C2: ’Characters on Parade: Contemporary Character Design invades Catwalk’
› José Teunissen, professor at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, Arnhem: ‘Beyond the Individual: Fashion and Identity Research’
› Francesca Granata, Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies at Parsons The New School for Design, curator and editor of Fashion Projects: A Journal on Art, Fashion and Visual Culture: ‘Decentering Fashion: Carnival Performance and the Grotesque Body’
› Valerie Steele, Director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York: ‘The Exaggerated Body of Leigh Bowery’
› Ted Polhemus, anthropologist, curator and writer of the renowned book Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk: ‘Atopic Bodies’